Is it the Same?

For some reason, I never created my list of goals for 2023, but as I may have mentioned, getting sick recently somehow sucked out all ambition I had within me*, leaving me even more pathetic and Salvador Dali painting-esque than ever. 

But one of the goals I intend to make for the New Year is to get my book "Not the Same" published.  I'd been working on the audiobook and found it ironic that I had chosen to voice all the characters in a scene consisting of twin sisters and their single mother.  But even weirder, I gave the two identical twins DIFFERENT voices, so you could tell them apart.

I stole this image from an article that explained that autism symptoms varied greatly among identical twins.

Anyway, I've had a couple of struggles with it lately (including the burning suspicion that it just isn't very good), and one of them was this idea I had that Layla (the main character) has a fear of public speaking, but her twin sister (Shayla) does not.  I thought it would be fun if she had to address a group of strangers at the end, while pretending to be Shay, so I wrote a couple of new scenes and tried to crowbar them into what I had already written.  Like I said, I keep suspecting that the book is not a good one.

And then, this week, I had this terrible discovery while going through it, where I mentioned early on that the sisters have a peanut allergy, then it comes up again in the middle, and then . . .  nothing.

You're familiar with Chekhov's Gun, right?  Well, I am too, and when I saw the two references to peanuts, I did a quick search for the word again, to see how I'd paid it off, and wouldn't you know, I hadn't.  So, I wasted an entire writing session trying to do something with peanuts (even going so far as to research which candy bars have them and which don't, and if someone is allergic to peanuts are they allergic to almonds as well), and wasted an entire recording session last night trying to shoehorn them into to the scenes I had already recorded.

Anyhow, despite all my sweat and self-doubt, I'm nearly done recording it, and then I will focus full-time on Abbie's (much, much, much longer) book.

Meanwhile, Big Anklevich sent me this:

Big was kind enough to do two different covers for it, using the two photos I sent him (neither of which were of twins, but in searching for images of sisters, I found two that I liked).  I realize that "Not The Same" isn't the most dynamic of titles (some a-hole somewhere said that your title should convey either the genre or the tone [or both] of your book, and mine does not, though unlike the original title "Unidentical Twins," it is at least legitimate English), so I thought I might add a tagline to the cover, since movie posters use them, and some books do too.

I put in the tagline that I wanted, but Big thought it tremendously gay, so I'll probably not include it in the actual release version . . . if I ever put it out.

By the way, the Wellington boughs hang heavy in June.

*To the point where I declined to sign up to work on that cooking competition show I worked on last January, despite it being fun, easy work that I looked back on fondly.  Nope, somebody else got that job instead of me, because I didn't even put my name into the running for it.