Best Feature Ever? Also, News!

Well this was a very pleasant surprise - and at a good time, too. Huge thanks to Vigilo for writing up this lovely Writer of the Month feature for

It's a beautiful piece, I'm really thrilled with it. I honestly can't think of a better feature, plaudit or award I've won on deviantART. I mean not only is it a nice gesture and very complimentary, but I actually think it's a good presentation of my work. It reminds me of the kind of thing we used to try and do at WritersInk, way back in the day.

I tend to feel guilty for getting featured these days. I was very active a few years back, but I don't give much time to the community anymore. Or my writing, really. I've had a little trickle of very generous features over the past year and it's hard to feel like I deserve them: there are other people who deserve the limelight I'm currently getting.

But actually, this time around feels a little different. I'm spinning an awful lot of plates at the moment, and this last week I've felt like most of them are destined to tumble to the floor. 2014 - and, to be fair, half of 2013 - has seen a flood of failed, abandoned or just inadequate projects pass over my desk. Some of the things I'm working on are currently showing a lot of promise - but I've definitely experienced a wave of low faith and lower confidence lately. It's all I can do to just keep chipping away, however slow progress can seem. But, as The Mooney Suzuki once wrote: sometimes something comes for nothing.

My feeling blue is one of many reasons why, inspired by a moment of disillusion and possibly madness this weekend, I wrote this small Depression Simulator game in Twine. It's a bit of a joke, really, and yet it's also completely not. I guess it's just a flippant interpretation of what depression feels like. Maybe a more nuanced approach would be more effective - but I wasn't feeling nuanced at the time. I played with Twine quite a bit at the start of the year: this is the first and only story that I've been ready to publish. And it took all of an hour to write. Amazing really what can come out of the blue.

Anyway, yesterday was a good day. Vigilo's feature was a welcome boost (seriously, go read it and give the group and the post a little love - it takes time to put together a quality feature like that), I won some delicious mince pies, and one of my projects took a big (if risky) step forward. I've been writing a little more lately too, feeling the love of words - although they're personal pieces and I'm not sure any will make it online.

As a result, I am currently feeling grateful for the good things in my life - even if sometimes I forget they're there - and deeply appreciative of the deviantART community.

Big love