More Writing.

Welp, I wrote this post on my lunch break and then my stupid app didn't post it, so now I'm trying again and hopefully I remember everything.

More on the steampunk Cinderella idea. I want to name her Ann because her father loved his anvil. He was a blacksmith until his second wife convinced him to go for gold. Later he died in a mining accident. I want an old west type of setting. Ann learned smithing from her father, mostly as a hobby but she makes some money off it. She sells her stuff through a male blacksmith/whitesmith in town, because after her father quit smithing, she discovered that no one wanted to buy stuff from a female half-Mexican smith. (Half-Mexican because I figure the stepmother wouldn't have married a Mexican man.) The new smith came to town and they work together because she is better at blacksmithing than he is, but he is a good whitesmith, and this way she can sell her work without anyone knowing. Which is agreeable enough for her stepmother, who thinks that smithing is an embarrassingly low-brow job, and inappropriate for a woman. The stepmother, to support her family after the father's death, does need to work, so she goes for something that she considers respectable enough and requires no hard labor--managing a hotel is what I'm thinking. (Not a brothel-hotel.)

Definitely want a snarky comment about how the stepmother thought gold was more important than iron and that's how they got to this point in their lives.

Something about having to rappel off a mesa.

Government guys post in newspaper "FOUND: small shoe, covered in goldwork. To obtain, prove ownership by producing mate. Red Plains Police Office." Stepmother finds the second shoe somewhere, gets all gold-greedy, takes the shoe in, and gets arrested. Ann is gone by then.

I like the old west setting because it's apropos for steampunk without being the usual Victorian England type. I also like the fact that it is a playground of a lot of different cultures coming together in a new, different, hostile place, for different reasons. I haven't done a ton of research so excuse me if I'm mistaken, but off the top of my head: Plenty of Europeans and eastern Americans coming for gold mining, cheap land, hunting, trapping, exploring, lumberjacking, searching for isolation to create their own communities. Chinese (and Irish?) immigrants coming to work on the railroad. Black people hiding after escaping slavery, or later on, having been freed from slavery, trying to make a new life in a place away from Southern culture. And of course, the Native Americans and Mexicans who were already there.

People, it seems, don't like being told that POC existed significantly in European and American culture. Even though they did. People cling desperately to their whitewashed history. I'd like to believe that people are more willing to accept racial/cultural diversity in a fantastical setting, that is clearly not supposed to co-exist with real history, and therefore doesn't need to be "historically accurate," but... well, diversity in media and its reception is a whole other huge topic. Let's just say I'm sick of everyone being white all the time.

Writing Ideas.

Even though I don't make time for writing. Even though I'm in the middle of a script (and have been for a freaking long time). Raine gave me this first writing idea (developed a bit since then). Others at random.

1. Steampunk Cinderella. Her name won't be Cinderella or Ella or Cinders or Ash or anything like that. Let's not be obvious. I don't want the fairy tale to be explicit. Coaldust I think would be a good title. I want her to be Latina because I'm sick of protagonists being white all the time when there's no reason for them not to be. And Latin American people don't get much love in film.

Her father left her some info, hidden in the fireplace, about some secret society he was in and how she needs to finish his job if he dies before a specific time (when the story takes place). That's why she has to stay in that house with her step-family, so the agents can find her. An agent comes and gives her a mission and equipment, to gain information at a festival (pirates' ball). It is [probably some letters that reveal a government conspiracy, that the pirates are being paid by the government to keep hidden. So she goes to the ball to do some spying. (If my dreams were to be fulfilled, Steam Powered Giraffe would be playing at the ball. But with elevated uncanny valley levels for extra robotness.) She has these cute little Rococo-style shoes for being fancy at the ball, but she takes them off and puts them in her pockets (little shoes, big skirt) for ease of sneaking and running. At the end of the festival she has to jump from the ship (airship) to the dock (cliff) to escape, and one of her shoes falls out of her pocket. So that's what the government guys use to find her. But instead of finding her, she leaves the shoe at her house for them to find, and sets up some way for her step-family to be incriminated. No romance in the story. I like it better this way.

•It could be something not shoes. Like fancy gloves, or a goggle lens.
•Midnight has to be important somehow.

2. Something medieval. Mostly I want something with real medieval fashion instead of glamorous Hollywood medieval fashion. And the soundtrack is medieval music. And the main character is a black woman, or maybe Middle Eastern. (Like I said, freaking sick of always white characters.) She's a spy or something. I don't really have a story for this.

3. D&D musical. The more I think about this, the less interesting it seems. But basically a new guy in town makes friends with a co-worker and gets invited to "game night". He's thinking poker or some boring stuff, but actually they are playing D&D (or whatever ttrpg; could just fabricate one for the script). So he gets indoctrinated. There's only one girl in the group, and she's not very friendly, which makes them assume she's gay. She probably leaves the game because the guys are dicks to her. (too autobiographical?) The songs take place in real life (except if a character is a bard?) but the game has its own scenes and stories that mirror the player's life problems. I haven't thought up anything really interesting for this. I've written some very rough lyrics which will have to be posted later. Songs to include: "Crit Hit Song," "Crit Fail Song," "Give Him A Saving Throw," "Why Are There So Many Damn Numbers & Rules," "Girls Play This Too," "It's Game Night"

Tentttttt

I didn't get any good photos of my tent when we went to Goblin Valley at the end of May, but it was in perfectly fine working order.

It's that green one in the middle.

And then about a month later I'm using it again, and the thing is basically falling apart.

You can see here how sadly saggy the canvas is. The loops that hold the canvas to the top bar are becoming unsewn from gravity. The whole thing was so loose that I had to keep pulling the canvas to the ends of the poles to try to keep it in the right shape. It was very sad.

Now, I could fix the thing... again... but I think I have learned everything I need from this one, so it's time for me to make a new one.

The changes:

♠ Light color for heat control, but not pure white to reduce brightness. Yes, people told me that the dark canvas would be too hot inside, but it wasn't until Goblin Valley that it did get toooooo hot.
♠ Same size, except door flaps bigger for more overlap.
♠ Trim with tabs on top to hold top bar (as shown above), but trim goes all the way down the sides to distribute the weight, and reinforced like crazy at the top to reduce unsewing.
♠ Loops at the center edges to loop over the cross bars to keep it stretched out.
♠ Ties on sides of poles to ties to upright poles to further help with the stretching in shape.
♠ Ties along the top inside for hanging things like lanterns, clothes that need to dry, etc.
♠ Ties along bottom side to keep the floor tarp in place.
♠ Makes bags for stakes and pins.
♠ Make the upright canopy poles stakeable at the bottoms.

I've already drafted a pattern for the new canvas that uses 12 yards of 72" wide fabric instead of 15 yards of 60" fabric. The two fabrics cost about the same, so this will be a little cheaper than last time. And I don't have to remake the poles.

This is the fabric I'm using. Same fabric as the green, but different color and size. This fabric, while heavy, has not any any problems with being weatherproof. It does smell like crayons, even 7 years later, so that will probably never go away, but it airs out well while in use. Really no problems with the fabric, only with my construction.

In which I continue to address long-standing issues.

I need better online marketing.

I stayed up too late trying to optimize the descriptions on my pins (pinterest) from my etsy shop, because the etsy search has been failing me. I used to search "tablet weaving" or a derivative term, and my items would come up at the top and all throughout the search results. Now, only a few of my items are found, and  they are pretty far down on the list. What happened? Do I need to change my tags? There is more weaving on the site than before, but that shouldn't completely prevent my pieces from being found.

My etsy shop has been eternally frustrating. I'm terrible at marketing. I try to learn, but apparently that's not going so well. And I don't exactly make enough money to pay someone to do it for me.

I can definitely improve what I am doing. I post new listings on my Faire Sisters facebook page, which automatically posts to my Faire Sisters twitter account. Then I repost to my personal facebook and twitter accounts. I also post new listings on Pinterest. To improve, I should create a more steady stream of posts by posting extant listings after they've been up for a while. I sometimes post listings  that are going to expire in the next 1-2 weeks, but that hasn't actually garnered sales. Holding discounts hasn't garnered sales either. Neither has having a coupon code on my business cards.

I don't do blogging marketing, which I know can be useful--it seems to work well for Marie. I am really bad at blogging about stuff I make, or really, documenting in any way, like progress photos. Remember my former "What I Made This Month" posts? And how I stopped doing them because it was too much for me to keep track of?

I don't want this blog to draw traffic from strangers, which means I'd have to make a specific Faire Sisters blog. How can I force myself to do blogging more? I rarely even do personal blogging anymore, or read others' blogs. And I think a big part of marketing blogging is having a blogosphere of other crafters, which means I'd have to find some and... participate.

And then there's monetizing blogs. Does that help? Does it draw traffic, or is it just monies by itself? (I can't imagine it bringing much money.) I hate going to craft/food blogs that have constant pop-ups and huge ads in the middle of the post. (No I don't want to subscribe to your stupid newsletter! I haven't even read the post yet!)

Yvette was helping me with marketing at some point (4 years ago, holy crap), and one of her big strategies was for me to build a craft blog. But it's bloody stressful. I can't go in and do SCA-style documentation for every historical piece I make. And I hate explaining things. I really do.

But the point is that I can use all the marketing strategies I can get, and unfortunately that means doing a lot of uncomfortable things. So I guess I'm going to make a Faire Sisters blog.

Side thought: I've been thinking about changing the brand name for a long time because Faire Sisters is pretty lame and I have to explain how it's spelled every time. Is it too late for that, though? Will I lose followers/customers? I can't think up a good alternative anyway...